The condition of a surface can dictate the performance of many devices. For example, platinum films are often used to catalyze reactions. Other examples of reactive surfaces include biocatalytic coatings, fuel cell and battery electrodes, photocatalytic coatings, and industrial catalysts. Reduction in performance of the devices can be due to contamination, degradation of the surface, such as by corrosion, and by wear. Often materials employed to form reactive surfaces are extremely expensive and, at the same time, highly sensitive to environmental factors or even perishability over time.
Destructive testing, of course, can be employed to determine the condition of surfaces, but at the cost of compromising the integrity of the device employing the surface that is tested. As a quality control issue, if there is no other alternative, sampling of production lines will result in sacrifice of selected units for the purpose of maintaining a statistically high probability of acceptability in the remaining units. Statistical techniques, however, are never as good as testing each unit, and nondestructive testing is the only alternative. Further, nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is often employed to conduct inspection for defects that cannot be measured by destructive testing, such as identification of the size and location of surface and subsurface flaws and defects, such as cracks, voids and corrosion. Methods of NDE include, for example, visual inspection, liquid penetration inspection, acoustic emission monitoring, magnetic particle inspection, eddy current testing, ultrasonic inspection and radiographic inspection. However, NDE methods have their own limitations relative to destructive testing. A primary example of a common limitation of nondestructive testing is an inability to assess the propensity of a reactive surface to react as intended. Therefore, even with a combination of destructive and nondestructive techniques, testing of reactive surfaces remains limited, thereby capping the reliability of instrumentation and testing devices that employ reactive surfaces.
Therefore, a need exists for a device and method that overcomes and minimizes the above-referenced problems.